Getting started with project

SUST-CSIT Ahmed Hamza

Getting Started with Project


Understand the family of Microsoft Office Project 2007 products.

Understand what a good project management tool can help you accomplish.

Start Project Standard or Project Professional, and identify the major parts of the Project window.

Use views to work with project plan details in different ways.

Use reports to print project plan details. Create a project plan and enter a project start date. Set the working and nonworking time for a project. Enter a project plan’s properties

Objectives


With a good project management system in place, you should be able to answer such questions as

What tasks must be performed, and in what order, to produce the deliverable of the project?

When should each task be performed? Who will complete these tasks? How much will it cost? What if some tasks are not completed as

scheduled? What’s the best way to communicate project

details to those who have an interest in the project?

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Good project management does not guarantee the success of every project, but poor project management usually contributes to failure.


Succeeding as a project manager requires that you complete your projects on time, finish within budget, and make sure your customers are happy with what you deliver

First, a project is temporary Next, a project is an endeavor. Resources, such

as people and equipment, need to do work. Finally, every project creates a unique product

or service. This is the deliverable for the project and the reason that the project was undertaken

Understanding What Defines a Project





The Project Triangle: Viewing Projects in Terms of Time, Cost, and Scope



Time, Cost, and Scope: Managing Project Constraints

Time, cost, and scope are the three essential elements of any project. To succeed as a project manager, you should know quite a bit about how all three of these constraints apply to your projects

this model is a useful learning tool but not always a reflection of the real world


you might see projects delivered late but at planned cost or with expected scope


The best project management tool in the world can never replace your own good judgment. However, the tool can and should help you accomplish the following:

Track all of the information you gather about the work, duration, costs, and resource requirements of your project.

Visualize and present your project plan in standard, well-defined formats.

Schedule tasks and resources consistently and effectively.

Managing Your Projects with Project


Communicate with resources and other stakeholders while you, the project manager, retain ultimate control of the project.

Manage projects using a program that looks and feels like other desktop productivity applications

Exchange project information with other Microsoft Office System applications.

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It’s common to see task and resource lists from spreadsheet programs, such as Microsoft Office Excel

One big advantage that Project has over such applications is that it includes a scheduling engine-a computational brain that can handle issues

This scheduling engine can also consider nonworking time, such as weekends, when calculating a task’s start and finish dates

What Can a Scheduling Engine Do for You?


On the File menu, click New. The New Project task pane appears. In the New Project task pane, under Templates,

click On computer. The Templates dialog box appears. Click the Project Templates tab. Click New Business (you may need to scroll down

through the list of Project Templates to see it), and then click OK.

Tip Depending on how Project was installed on your computer, the templates included with Project might not be installed at this point.


Exploring Views◦ The working space in Project is called a view. Project

contains dozens of views, but you normally work with just one view (sometimes two) at a time. You use views to enter, edit, analyze, and display your project information. The default view-the one you see when Project starts-is the Gantt Chart view shown here.

◦ On the View menu, click Resource Sheet Resource Usage Task Usage Calendar






Exploring Reports Project contains two types of reports

◦ tabular reports that are intended for printing◦ visual reports that allow you to export Project

data to Excel and Visio On the Report menu, click Reports Click Custom, and then click the Select

button On the Reports list, click Resource

(work), and then click the Preview button



Next, you will create a visual report to get a close look at overall resource workload and availability through the life of the project

On the Report menu, click Visual Reports.

For Show Report Template Created In, make sure that Microsoft Office Excel is selected and that the All tab is visible.

Click Resource Remaining Work Report, and then click View.




On the File menu, click the New command. Then, in the New Project task pane, click Blank Project.

Project creates a new, blank project plan. Next, you’ll set the project’s start date.

On the Project menu, click Project Information.

The Project Information dialog box appears. In the Start date box, type or select

1/7/11.

Creating a New Project Plan



Tip In most cases when you need to enter a date in Project, you can click the down arrow next to the Date field to show a small monthly calendar. There you can navigate to any month and then click the date you want, or click Today to quickly choose the current date.

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The project calendar defines the general working and nonworking time for tasks

On the Tools menu, click Change Working Time In the For calendar box, click the down arrow. The list that appears contains the three base

calendars included with Project. These calendars are as follows:

24 Hours: Has no nonworking time. Night Shift: Covers a “graveyard” shift schedule of

Monday night through Saturday morning, 11 P.M. to 8 A.M., with a one-hour break.

Setting Nonworking Days



Standard: The traditional working day, Monday through Friday from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M., with a one-hour lunch break.

Only one of the base calendars serves as the project calenda

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Like other Microsoft Office programs, Project keeps track of several file properties. Some of these properties are statistics, such as how many times the file has been revised. Other properties include information you might want to record about a project plan, such as the project manager’s name or keywords to support a file search. Project also uses properties in page headers and footers when printing.

Entering Project Properties


you enter some properties that you will use later when printing project information and for other purposes.

On the File menu, click Properties. The Properties dialog box appears. Click the Summary tab if it is not already visible. In the Subject box, type Video production schedule. In the Author box, type your name. In the Manager box, type your name, type your

manager’s name, or leave the box blank. In the Company box, type Southridge Video. Select the Save preview picture check box

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The Project product family includes Project Standard, Project Professional, Project Server, and Project Web Access. Normally, you would use Project Standard on the desktop or the latter three in combination to form an EPM solution.

One of the key distinguishing factors that separates Project from other list-keeping tools, such as Excel, is that Project has a scheduling engine that can work with time.

Project includes several sophisticated templates that can provide you with a good start to a new project plan.

Key Points


The main working space in Project is a view. One or sometimes two views are typically displayed at a time. The Gantt Chart view is the default and probably best known view in Project.

Project includes a large number of built-in reports that are intended for viewing (but not editing) Project data.

You use calendars in Project to control when work can be scheduled to occur

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Getting started with project

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